


All of Six Weeks

by KorrohShipper



Series: All of these Weeks [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Confusion, F/M, Hurt, Moving On, Peggy Carter is a Great Spy, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Pre-Steggy Week Fic, Reunion, Steggy - Freeform, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:27:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24905323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KorrohShipper/pseuds/KorrohShipper
Summary: "To wager a bet," then, a playful smile, one that had a look of fondness, almost matriarchal to it than the others. "He still has no idea on how to talk to women."
Relationships: Peggy Carter & Ancient One, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Series: All of these Weeks [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1802119
Comments: 4
Kudos: 63





	All of Six Weeks

**Week 1**

There was always a belief of meritocracy in Peggy Carter's life. Hard work, as it was drilled into her from an early age, would only serve to better her in life.

Despite hard work not truly paying off in the matters of the heart, with her relationship with Daniel, in spite of best efforts from both parties, came to, albeit amicable, an end and resulted in no promising fruition, Peggy believed that if she worked hard enough, there will be results.

Love, Peggy thought sadly, with a determined spirit to move on and accept, was, for her, destined to be found in the comfort of friends and other people who she held dear in her heart in a more platonic than romantic way.

Aside from the aforementioned field, so far, the appendage proved right. Just two years shy of her 30th birthday, Peggy left the now defunct SSR in favor of creating her own intelligence agency with the scope, autonomy, and resources to combat local and foreign enemy intelligence and other threats to world peace and security.

To summarize, Peggy has worked for her position in life. She has clawed her way towards her positions through an uphill climb and it's because of, primarily, being a bloody good spy.

Her position at Bletchley had been her first take at being a spy. It was at that point in life where she learned how to case a situation, the importance of observation, and the right amount of pressure to apply. There was a recruitment drive for a secretary and while Peggy had accepted, she knew just what buttons to push to become a code breaker.

The next lesson she had to learn was discretion. If the war taught her anything, discretion and strategy was far more crucial and effective than an invasion of arms. The intelligence she had delivered, the coded messages she deciphered had all amounted to a life saved and a casualty avoided—all because she knew how to be invisible.

Lastly, perhaps the most important aspect of being a spy, is knowing the enemy. Psychology, which had been her course of interest back when she was studying at the uni, proved to be helpful. Knowing how to apply pressure was useful, no doubt, but would only bear results if she were barking up the right tree, so to say. Knowing how a mind works, the reason behind actions and words were tools Peggy had used to save her life countless times.

It is with those skills that Peggy deems herself, if not a skilled spy, then a bloody able agent.

It is also with those skill sets, Peggy decides that any spy worth their salt should bloody well know when they're being tailed.

Since the beginning of June, Peggy knew that her nights were no longer spent alone. Every route home, she could catch, just by the corner of her eyes the lingering shadow that crept just in the corner of the dark streets or hear by the faintest whisper of the wind the padding of footsteps against the pavement.

While confronting the spy would have been easier, and frankly, the right thing to do, there was a sound and loaded firearm snuggled into her ankle holster and it would prove entertaining if nothing else to see the spy's face when they've discovered they're made.

Peggy would be lying if she said she wasn't intrigued by who this spy is—a spy who she thinks, without doubt, to be the worst she's ever beheld in her life.

* * *

**Week 2**

Peggy's shadow, she learns from observation, only appears at night when she sets upon her route home, circling around a New York park to clear her mind and have the respite of a peaceful walk.

The spy—a male, she notes from the size alone of his shadow—is not obtrusive. He merely gazes from afar that sometimes, she could feel his stares burning just at the back of her neck and she fights every fibre in her body screaming at her to turn around and confront him already.

His days to her are unknown, spent in secrecy while she is confined to her office. There were times where she wonders what he is plotting against her, if his masters are deliberately making him too known to throw her off guard.

Either way, Peggy decides, one of these days, she would have to face him up.

* * *

**Week 3**

She is furious.

The spy is well-versed on her profile and history, but clearly thinks her too emotional. 

Peggy had to admit, when she first saw him, gazing away from her, that her heart had been brought to an abrupt stop and that her breathing had ceased for the briefest moment. There was the slightest second of time where she allowed herself to be the woman she was once in the war—someone who lost somebody she held dear to her heart.

But clearly, if that spy and his masters thought that she would sit by and let them desecrate the name and legacy of Steve Rogers, of taking his face in an attempt to blind her, then they are in for a rude awakening. She would hunt them to the ends of this earth if it meant making them pay, for disturbing a man who is supposed to rest, for tarnishing Steve Rogers and everything he stood for after he had died and gave his life for his country and fellow man.

It is because Peggy thinks of her failure and inability to save Steve from his death with the Valkyrie, that she is going to do everything in her power to protect what little he has left.

* * *

**Week 4**

The spy was now being spied.

Little explanation was needed at SHIELD. What good is being the boss of her own intelligence agency if she couldn't follow a lead on her own and take an off day?

But it is also a realization for her.

His days were not spent in secrecy, not like most spies. No, it was spent in broad daylight with people remembering everywhere he went.

The impostor had an apartment in Brooklyn. What was most striking to her was that it was in a neighborhood near Steve and James' old apartment and only a thirty minute drive away from the Barnes family home.

She had also learned from Rebecca Barnes-Proctor, the married sister of the late Sgt. James Barnes, a woman she has come to know as a great friend had told her of a mysterious occurrence—groceries would appear on their doors or other favors such as an outdoor sink fixing itself overnight or perhaps a fence that needed mending.

And it all began when this man had taken an apartment near them, nearly four weeks ago.

The most mysterious of them all is the sudden talk of the city.

S. Grant Wilson.

Peggy would have bet her life and office that Mr. Wilson was the spy who kept her company on her evening strolls.

Moreover, Mr. Wilson is the talk wherever Peggy goes.

The boys at a nearby basketball court had been her first witness. She overhears them as they would exclaim in amazement: "Did you see Mr. Wilson shoot the ball from across the court? He's got to have some sort of super strength for that!"

The nuns at the orphanage weren't short of words, either: "Sister Bartholomew, it seems our guardian angel has arrived in the form of dear Mr. Wilson! What, haven't you heard? He's just about fixed the air conditioning unit in the children's ward, just in time for this summer heat. Heart of gold that one." 

The orphans themselves would beam brightly at the sight of him: "Gee, Mr. Wilson, you sure do draw pretty. Can you teach me how?" as much as she's collected, S. Grant Wilson is holding free art lessons in his apartment every Thursday afternoon, open to children of all ages, with snacks and refreshments, a refuge for parents working all day.

There was, unsurprisingly, a bake club of young wives and young daughters who spoke of him, as well: "I heard that he's single. Daddy said Grant was a soldier during the war and his sweetheart was a nurse in Hawaii, died when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor." And then, a conspiratorial remark as she leaned towards her friend. "The Stork Club offered a night out for veterans Saturday. Mama and Daddy went and I came along. Bartender says he just kept standing by the bar. Saturday, 8 o'clock on the dot, he said. I tried to ask him, but he said he'd just step on my toes, that he just wanted to have the band play something slow."

Of course, there was the elderly woman he helped out who lived in a house across from his apartment building—then, she learned, he had bought out the building, becoming its landlord and handyman: "Oh, ever since my husband died in the Great War, I've been living alone. That wonderful man, Stephen—" Peggy nearly choked on her own breath. Stephen Grant Wilson. _Bloody Nora_ , of course that's his name, "—spends his mornings looking after the community, of course, but then he'd head over here after lunch and tend to the garden or fix anything broken, or just spend some time with me. He's a real sweetheart, dear."

There was an advertising company he did freelance work for and the secretary there had flushed a scarlet red and gushed about him: "Oh, Grant? _Golly_ , I don't know where to start, our editor, Mr. Simmons, wants to hire him, the best illustrator he's ever seen. And have you seen him? Very dreamy! He's built like Adonis, or that famous war hero—what's he called again. . .Captain America!"

Her most recent interview was a tenant in his building, Dennis Washington, an African American soldier who fought in Anzio. He had trouble finding an apartment and a job, but Mr. Wilson—she refused to refer to him as 'Stephen'—had readily offered him a place to stay and a job: "Mr. Wilson? Oh, he's real swell. His building's a refuge from prejudice, you know? Japanese Americans who couldn't find a place anywhere else, said they're welcome here, said that his old friend from the war in his unit was Japanese American, too, that he had saved his life. Jack Morida, or something—" she had sharply sucked in a breath. _Jim Morita_. "—and don't get me started on that woman from 6D. Her husband had shellshock, came out from the war differently, said the wife. Drinks all day and fights all night. One day, she stepped out with her skin more black and blue with a shiner. Grant stepped in, he could have been arrested, yeah, but he said he didn't like bullies and he wasn't about to tolerate one now. As far as I know, Grant's helping Loretta, the lady from 6D, get herself a good lawyer to file for divorce and offered her his protection if need be."

When she asked if there was anything suspicious about him, he jokingly said, "He'd always mutter where his phone was, patting his pockets as if a landline would fit there." Then, with a grimace, "God! His coffee. Grant Wilson's a great man, so much so that it makes up for how bad his coffee is. I swear that man has a steel stomach for that morning joe! I guess we can't be good at everything."

With each testimony she has collected, the more the line has blurred. Every witness' testimony had seemingly pieced together an image of him that was beyond her expectations of what an impostor would know. 

The horrible coffee? She could remember the groans of the Howling Commandos, their protests whenever Steve took the morning shift and made coffee that would only be consumed by him and Sgt. Barnes, the other man with the stomach for his concoctions.

Dislike of bullies? Peggy could just hear Steve say it, every line of it screams Steve Rogers that she could imagine him, rising up to the tenant's door and knocking it open until he stopped the fight because he couldn't stand bullies. Standing up for others. That's the reason he had joined up the war in the first place.

Fierce defense of the Japanese Americans? Peggy saw it once, during a leave in war torn London. A brigade of American soldiers had all but spat at Jim Morita, spouting ridiculous nonsense about going back to Japan. She was about to give those boys a piece of her mind when Steve came in, clad in olive drab, star-spangled shield in hand. "You got a problem with one of my guys, fellas? I mean, you do know he's from Fresno or do I need to tell your CO that you're picking on a Howlie?" whether it be Gabe or Jacques or Jim, Steve always stood up for them.

Then, she remembered Belgium. They had liberated a village from German occupation. They were just about to leave when a priest from the church had invited them over for a quick meal. It was there where Steve saw the orphans of war. To cheer them up, he had organized a small art class in the schoolhouse. They had been late to their rendezvous point with Colonel Phillips by a day, but Peggy wrote her report, fighting a smile, that they had faced difficulties travelling due to unsuitable road conditions.

But she could have chalked it up to intensive research. Steve's kindness during the war hadn't been silenced. There are many men who have since then opened up about their experience with Captain America and the Howling Commandos, of how their lives were saved or what kindness in a bleak time was shown to them. 

All of those she could have had a logical reasoning to refute the squalling of her heart saying it's him.

But the bake club had been the one to take the cake, so it seems. Colonel Phillips, now Lt. General, had been at the doorway of the radio room. He had stood vigil and guard, unwilling to let anyone go inside while they talked. He wouldn't have heard, he was too far from the comms. Those words they had exchanged, the only witness on earth had been the both of them, and after he had crashed the bomber, only she would remember those words, those last minutes of his life have since then existed only in her memory.

So, how, she asks in quiet, internal despair, would this impostor know their words. The Stork Club, 8 o'clock on the dot, step on your toes, have the band play something slow? There is no logical explanation that would account for anyone else but Steve.

But if he is, then why did he stay away all this time?

* * *

**Week 5**

"So, you are the woman worth breaking timelines for?" 

In a fit of wrestling memories in place, Peggy found herself standing, at midnight, in front of the red brick building that Stephen Grant Wilson owned. She had half a mind to storm inside, raise her pistol point blank at his face and demand an explanation on why he continued to haunt her from the shadows when she had just learned to move on. She would demand, her finger shaking on the trigger, how on earth such an evil could exist of dangling Steve Rogers in front of her time and time again.

But before any of her thoughts were put into action, a woman had appeared from a dark alleyway. A peculiar woman, no doubt, dressed in bright yellow and orange robes, similar to monks and the Dalai Lama. Her head was shaven clean of any hair and she carried herself with an air of judgement, whether misplaced or deserved was yet to be determined.

"Excuse me?"

"Well, no timeline was broken." Amended the woman. "Everything is put into its proper place. But to him, he thinks he has set the world on an unknown course of untold fate and destruction."

"I'm sorry," Peggy says tightly, her hand just about hovering over her ankle holster. "I think you're confused."

The woman's face lit up in recognition and smiled, but not warmly nor hostile. "Director Margaret Carter, yes." She offered her hand and Peggy, out of politeness and courtesy, accepted it. She had opened her mouth to ask if she's met her someplace before, though she highly doubts it when the woman spoke up again. "No, I'm afraid you have yet to meet me."

"Then why— _how_ do you know me?" she asks, wary, though not unaware of what her precarious situation may appear to be. 

The stranger smiles wryly, all-knowing and rolled her eyes. "There are many things I know, Director, many things my eyes have seen that the world is yet to behold."

A younger Peggy Carter would have dismissed this encounter. The woman before her held no threat to her, at least no threat known to her. But there was something else about the woman, a different aura that compelled her. This woman was powerful, that alone Peggy understood.

"Who are you?" she asks carefully, eyed wary and cautious. 

Again, the wry smile was flashed her way. "No one of importance to you." Then she adds, imperiously and yet impishly at the same time, " _Yet_."

The woman gave her a knowing look and glanced at the building. Her cheeks burned and Peggy steeled her resolve. "Are you," she began nearly stumbling over her own words as they shook, "Are you the reason why he's here? Did you send him here?"

"The reason why he is here is irrelevant to you." Then, she frowns and tuts her finger accordingly. " _Yet_."

Anger and frustration blossomed in her chest. She was getting nowhere with this woman. "Listen, I am—"

"—not asking the questions worth answering." The woman finished for her and she was left quite breathless. 

Quietly, in the wake of the darkness, Peggy stared at a window, thinking if it was his room, thinking if he had indeed returned. "Is it him?" Peggy found herself asking, not breaking her vigil watch of the window, voice shaking in the slightest.

Bracing herself for flat out rejection or the usual vague deflection, Peggy had halted in her breathing when she was answered with, "Yes. He has indeed returned."

Then suddenly, the insecurities and hurt and betrayal had been bombarded and replaced with questions. "How?"

"That answer is beyond your comprehension."

"I need to know."

There was a sigh beside her, a long suffering sigh of exhaustion and disbelief exasperation that oddly reminded her of Chet Phillip. "You will not stop until you know." It was not a question as she nodded.

"I'm afraid I won't stop. I can’t." Then, she chances a glance and found her staring at the same window. "How?"

"He was asleep for many years, lifetimes and worlds." She would be lying if she said she understood, but Peggy's heart sank nonetheless. She had given up. Of all things, she had given up when he hadn't. "He has fought."

Peggy thinks of his alias, Stephen Grant Wilson. A soldier who fought in the war. He had been trapped behind enemy lines in Volgograd. She remembers this because she had been there—it was a rough winter and a blizzard had already caved in some of their troops in their trenches. 

She had been with Steve and the Howling Commandos when they stormed the enemy base nearby. Half a battalion had been rescued, the other half wasn't as lucky. Peggy remembers surveying the list of casualties, and when she pulled up the military records, she had seen the list of men who had died. She remembered seeing the string-bound stack of letters to be delivered to remote and distinct corners of every allied nation to give notice to their fallen son.

She remembers one S. Grant Wilson in one of those letters. She pulls out the records and she sees it—a copy of the Western Union telegram. Signed and sealed and delivered. A pair of dog tags and a folded flag. 

And now he is alive, all of a sudden.

Moreover, he looks like a ghost from her past.

"Why did he come back?"

At this, a more genuine smile had fought its way to the woman's face. "The reason?" she echoed purposefully. "You know why. It is what everyone dreams of having, the fantasy and hardship of it all."

Love.

"Is he. . .is he going to leave?" Peggy thinks of the woman's earlier words. Steve had fought wars, he fought alongside different men and women in their cause. If it was true, what the woman said, Steve had lived a life.

"I don't think he will." Then, there was a pause. She looked at the window and Peggy could almost see the gears in her head turning in a systematic process. "You see, all his life, he's a man out of time, however you perceive it—now, he's finally in time. He has all the time in the world, he simply needs to come to terms with it."

Then, Peggy braves a thought. "If he is here," she says _if_ because she is not willing, not yet, to stake what progress she's made just yet. The future she could make, the future she could still have, isn't worth gambling away just yet. "Then why is he waiting so long? Acting like a spy when he's spotted immediately." 

"To wager a bet," then, a playful smile, one that had a look of fondness, almost matriarchal, maternal to it than the others. "He still has no idea on how to talk to women."

* * *

**Week 6**

There was a knock on her door.

When Peggy pulled the door open, her breath nearly caught on a hold. "I. . .what do you say about that dance?"

' _He still has no idea on how to talk to women._ ' The strange woman once said and she laughed. 

"Come on in, then, you hot and dusty traveler. Tell me just where you've been—" Steve's face morphed in quick succession from nervous hope, to worried confusion, and to finally, a tired, but ready smile.

"I can't say that." He says lightly, but it held an edge of weight to his words. He really did look like a weary traveler and she processes what the woman says, man out of time, in a different light. "If it makes a difference," he says gravelly, his tone hoarse and near breaking point, "I couldn't call my ride."

"Consider yourself fortunate then, Captain," she says imperially, hiding just a softness in her eyes as she took his hand and led him straight to the middle of her living room, "that it does make a difference, I've shot men for less."

"You did shoot me, though, for being late."

" _At_ you." She corrected before gazing up at him, allowing herself the feeling emotions surging in through her in quick barrage. "Always so dramatic."

Then, in true Steve Rogers fashion, he stared down, a light twinkling in his eyes that wasn't just quite the tears pooling, "Only for you, Peg."

**Author's Note:**

> It's a wrap!
> 
> As for those who want a continuation, let's see. I mean, Steggy Week is coming up and weeks after all are followed by months and years and. . .you get the idea.
> 
> Thanks for reading this fic. Let me know what's your favourite week of Peggy being a damn good spy!


End file.
